In Power Up, scores at higher levels will be closer together and lower on average than scores at lower levels due to scoring not being independent this year. This means that one team scoring on an element will remove the ability for the other team to do the same. Thoughts?
Regarding Scale and the two switches its one alliance scoring at any time on each.
So its a race to exert control over the three at any moment.
Whats interesting is that losing ownership, does give to a new opportunity to earn an extra point each time you reaquire it.
So for tiebreakers on evenly matched alliances those retakes of ownership could be a difference, many games past couple seasons 1 pt won.
I think that this year’s game effectively addresses the “issue” that at high level gameplay in years past, sometimes points got “maxed out”. Not to the level where it was completely literally impossible to score any higher, but teams were mastering all the elements of gameplay and performing them at such a level that almost every point that could be gotten was.
I put “issue” in quotes because this isn’t definitively a problem—there’s still good, competitive gameplay that comes out of these high level matches. But in my opinion, what FIRST did this year has a lot of potential to make high level matches far more competitive, because they made the scoring relative to the caliber of the teams. If two rookie alliances face off, the score could be similar to two powerhouse alliances facing off.
Teams are more directly battling it out now, there’s less of a focus on strictly offensively scoring points for your own team. Points can only be scored by directly “taking them away” from the other team, which forces more back-and-forth.
I think this year’s game will also be more interesting to watch, because I would imagine there will be some suspense in evenly matched games as the platforms flip back and forth. However, I think unevenly matched games will arguably be far more boring this year, because once a superior alliance takes control of all three mechanisms, there’s not much left to do other than deliver cubes into an opening.
Ultimately, I think this year’s design was intended to make high level gameplay more interesting and challenging. This game is also far heavier on strategy opportunities than many games I have seen (granted, this is only my 4th year involved in FRC), especially with regard to the powerups. I think the time-based scoring was an interesting approach to this.
You can only ever control 1 switch, the switch in your side. The other switch you can only prevent the other alliance from controlling.
My first instinct is that it will be really exciting and back and forth when alliances are pretty even but very one sided when there is an advantage. Being able to dominate the middle scale and your switch the whole match is a sure fire way to win every match.
It’s not like in past games where if you are scoring 20% less then you get 20% less points. If you can’t keep up on the scale, you will likely lose all the points associated with it.
You can control (gain OWNERSHIP) of both switches and the scale (Section 3.4). But, you can only gain OWNERSHIP points from your switch and the scale.
Very true, but the point differentials from the switch come from a DIFFERENCE in the number of switches owned by each alliance. Claiming your own and defending it is a wash if the opposing alliance claims and defends theirs as well.
I agree with most of your post, but do you think two rookie alliances are going to be able to climb and compete for ownership of the scale? That would be cool, but I suspect that few rookie teams will be able to put any cubes on the scale.
Hmmm I didn’t factor climbing into this, I could see a deficit in points there.
Re the scale, I feel like there’s definite potential for some “Hail Mary” type mechanisms that wildly lob a cube with hopes of landing on the platform. My team is from northern Michigan, and both of our districts are usually pretty rookie-heavy. Every year I see at least several rookie teams with mechanisms designed to complete the most difficult task of the game, even if it doesn’t work well. Rarely is it the only mechanism, but in my experience it’s pretty common for a team to throw one on there “just in case”. Mechanisms of this type are not going to be competitive against teams with well-designed scale mechanisms, but I do think that they will exist, and possibly make a difference in a match where only one team can even access the scale at all.
I agree with this 110%. The distribution of robot goodness is very skewed. The non-linear scoring scheme massively rewards being just a little bit better than the other alliance. It will be super exciting when the alliances are very balanced, but that is frankly not a common occurrence.
There will be a lot of blow-outs.
I’m interested in seeing people’s ideas for stats that could be used like OPR normally would. Basically, points scored on Scale or Switch have almost no correlation with robot capability, so OPR isn’t useful.
DPR has never really been used much, but I think it could be rough rating of robot capability for this year, if you run it on only the Scale/Switch score data from FMS. If you cause other alliances to score less than they normally do, that means you’re probably placing cubes to do that. Since the scoring tells you fairly directly that one alliance is “better” than the other, but not by how much, you could mix in the components of an Elo system (an Elo system on its own would probably be pretty good, too) with successive solutions of the DPR score matrix after each match contributing to a running Elo rating total, weighted based on opponent DPR. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how the math for this could best be set up (definitely needs real match data and testing).
Depending on how much score data you get from FMS, you could possibly count how many times Ownership changes, which would help you rank teams relative to each other. If two teams change Ownership a lot, they are similarly capable. If one alliance has Ownership the whole match, then that alliance is clearly better. This also lends itself to Elo rating.
OPR might be useful in the context of climbing, if ramp/platform robots are widespread, or in cases where two robots cannot climb together because of conflicting designs. With those robots, you’d see robots who don’t normally climb suddenly getting those points, or vice versa. If you use a robot’s Climb OPR to find their expected climb contribution, you can compare that to their actual performance in each match. Do that for each of a robot’s partners throughout the competition and you figure out if that robot is a “facilitator” or a “blocker”.
I’m thinking point difference will be narrower compared to previous years on average. All bets are off at higher levels of play I don’t even want to think about it yet.
This. The time based aspect of this game is very unique, usually bonuses have required scoring multiple game pieces to form a shape/pattern. This year I can score 300 points with two Power Cubes and a good game of defense/keep away. FIRST found a unique way to try to avoid 0-0 matches.
Yeah points won’t be directly correlated with robot capability this year, will make for interesting scouting.
My other thought on early analysis is that climbing seems a bit undervalued. The RP possibility helps with seeding but there is no bonus come playoffs like the past two seasons. Climbs will swing evenly matched games but seem like they might be a non-factor anytime one alliance has the clear advantage on scale or switch scoring ability. Could lead to some interesting playoff upsets if good climbing bots seed high but don’t have a great switch/scale ability themselves.
So did last year, but that didnt stop teams from doing it.
To explain, they did the gears in the wrong order. Nothing more than that.